Jesus Teran (left) has been detained in the for-profit Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Western Pennsylvania since early in July. (Photo courtesy of Liseth Carvajal)
Jesus hasn’t seen his family in over seven weeks. He hasn’t kissed his wife Liseth goodnight, attended Sunday mass or tended the community garden he helped plant. Over the past seven weeks, Jesus’ world has been reduced to the gray walls of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a privately run concentration camp detention center in rural Pennsylvania.
The 35-year-old Venezuelan fled his country's brutal dictatorship in 2021, seeking asylum in a nation he believed offered refuge to the persecuted. He found work, paid taxes, showed up for his ICE check-ins like clockwork. He attended mass, volunteered at St. Oscar Romero Parish and built a life with his wife Liseth, raising a 14-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son together. He was doing everything “right.” And yet, on July 8, ICE arrested him outside its Pittsburgh office.
The timing wasn't coincidental. That same day, ICE implemented a new policy eliminating bond hearings for anyone who entered the country without documentation, no matter how long they've lived here or how deep their community ties run.
For Liseth, the policy change feels personal and devastating. "I feel very bad and very sad, I am worried about the future of Jesus and my family," she says, her voice breaking as she describes her husband's situation.
The couple's worst fear isn't just deportation to Venezuela; it's deportation to somewhere else entirely. The Trump administration has struck deals with countries like Uganda and Rwanda to accept asylum seekers from the U.S., meaning Jesus could be sent to a nation he's never seen, speaking languages he doesn't know.
"The worst part is, we don't even know which country he'd be sent to," Liseth says. "Imagine if it was Africa"—a continent thousands of miles from both his homeland and the life he's built in Western Pennsylvania.
Inside Moshannon, Jesus tries to stay strong for the other detainees, according to friends who've spoken with him. The men encourage each other, share stories and wait for news that rarely comes. Jesus is still waiting for his credible fear interview—a crucial hearing where he'll have to prove that returning to Venezuela could cost him his life.
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Even if he passes that test, his family has been told, he still faces possible deportation to a third country.
He's considering self-deportation," Liseth admits, describing the agonizing choice her husband faces. The entire situation is a catch-22. If Jesus self-deports, he gives up any chance of legal status, but if he stays; he risks being shipped in a land he’s completely unfamiliar with and potentially in a worse situation than he was in Venezuela.
The community hasn’t let Liseth and the kids face this alone. Volunteers tend the garden Jesus helped plant, organize a GoFundMe and flood authorities with letters of support. Friends and neighbors protest outside the detention center, waving signs, chanting his name. Father Jay Donahue has visited Jesus at Moshannon and led advocacy efforts from the pulpit. Nearly two dozen letters of support have flooded in from religious leaders, union representatives and neighbors who know Jesus as a devoted father and reliable worker.
Chris McAneny, director of housing for a nonprofit that partnered with the parish, is outraged. “He could be home with his family and working and paying taxes while his case is going through. He’s not a flight risk — he’s here on asylum and his family is here, his kids are going to school and he was working with the carpenter’s union. Now, we’re spending tax dollars to a for-profit prison group to detain him indefinitely. There is no compassion in this process.”
The lack of compassion extends to the facility itself. Moshannon is owned by the GEO Group, a private prison company that receives $3.4 million monthly from taxpayers to detain immigrants. The facility has faced repeated allegations of civil and human rights violations and when Congresswoman Summer Lee tried to visit on August 25, she was turned away.
The family is still coming to church," family friend Erenia Karamcheti observes. "They're still watering the garden after Sunday Mass."
It's a small act of faith in a system that seems designed to crush it. For a family torn apart by policy changes they never saw coming, maintaining these routines feels like the only way to keep hope alive.
